In Full Color

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In Full Color Page 28

by Rachel Dolezal


  I did the interview in July, and when it came out in August, I was devastated. I wasn’t on the cover, and the article was much shorter and much less empathetic than I’d been led to believe it would be. The article’s bias against me was apparent in its title: “Rachel Doležal’s True Lies,” which fed into the “fraudulent behavior” narrative being told about me. All the photographs the magazine chose to use supported that point of view, making me look pissed off, uncomfortable, and, by extension, guilty in the eyes of most readers. The article itself not only failed to clear up the confusion about me; it actually added to it by introducing new fallacies. Allison knew that I’d been braiding hair for more than two decades and had been making money doing it for years. During our many conversations, she even asked for my advice about her own hair. But the article gave the impression that I’d only just started braiding, making it sound like some sort of desperate last-resort career move. With the magazine’s reputation for delivering well-researched articles offering astute social commentary, I was hoping it might give my story the measured examination such a timely issue warranted and that it would help me restore my reputation, but it ended up doing more harm than good.

  While the whole world was trying to tear me down, Ambassador Attallah Shabazz, the eldest daughter of one of my biggest heroes, Malcolm X, contacted me on LinkedIn, asking if she could give me a call. “Of course,” I replied, not fully believing it was her. But it was. She offered me some crucial support, assuring me that not everyone was fooled by Larry and Ruthanne’s televised denunciation of me disguised as parental concern. She told me about her own family’s many trials with the media and how important it was for me to stay clear about who I was before the “manufactured media frenzy” had erupted in June. She consoled me by saying that she could see how passionate I was about human rights and that perhaps I wasn’t meant for a small, local platform, that I was just experiencing growing pains as I moved toward a national—perhaps even international—stage. “Don’t let this shape you,” she said.

  Offering me a safe space where I could be free from the “curiosities and funk” and speak from my experience as an activist and academic, she invited me to be on a panel at a film festival for the United Nations’ International Day of the Girl forum, which she was hosting in Louisville, Kentucky, in October. I gratefully accepted and was rewarded with an amazing experience. During the panel discussion, I talked about the role of identity in the documentary Somewhere Between, which traces the story of four teenage girls who were adopted from China and raised in contemporary America, and the significance of the film Skin, which depicts the true story of Sandra Laing, a dark-skinned girl born to white parents during the apartheid era in South Africa.

  Laing’s story had always resonated with me. Because she was legally classified as white but appeared Black, she was shunned by the white community, rejected by nine schools, refused service at stores, mocked, abused, and persecuted. As a teenager, she eloped to Swaziland with her Zulu boyfriend. When her father found out, he threatened to kill her. She became estranged from her family and was forced to live in a sort of racial limbo, not Black, not white, just misunderstood. There were very few people in the world I could identify with, but she was one of them. I was drawn to her story because of the way it depicted being categorized in different ways by different people, feeling isolated, and struggling to finding a harmonious place in the world.

  In the months preceding the trip to Louisville, I’d found myself being forced into an awkward position, with people constantly judging my hair, skin, body, and speech to decide if I passed their test for Blackness or whiteness. If my hair was too straight or my skin tone too light, people accused me of going back to being white and opting out of Blackness for convenience’s sake. If my hair was too textured or my skin too tan, they faulted me for cultural appropriation or perpetuating a fraud. As a response to this sort of scrutiny, I wore my hair in a loose wavy pattern and tried to adopt an ethnically indeterminate look that underscored that I wasn’t going back to looking white while not, I hoped, offending anyone who felt I wasn’t Black.

  Fortunately, I could be myself in Louisville, and, per Shabazz’s suggestion, discuss the films as I would have before the scandal erupted. It was comforting that everyone on the panel had experience with racial identity issues. Paula Williams Madison, a former executive at NBC Universal and a half-Chinese, half-Black woman commonly seen as Black, discussed Finding Samuel Lowe, the documentary she made about discovering her extended Chinese family. Lacey Schwartz talked about Little White Lie, the documentary she wrote and directed, chronicling her experience growing up white and finding out in college that she was half Black. In an interview on the news program Democracy Now! in June, Lacey had spoken harshly about me, but after meeting me and getting to know me she became much more empathetic. She wasn’t the only one there who came away with a better understanding of who I was. Toward the end of the panel discussion, a Black woman in the audience took the microphone and said, “I just want to apologize for being so wrong about you.”

  The trip was a healthy reprieve for me, but when I returned home it was back to reality. I was broke. I hadn’t gotten a paycheck since June. I had no savings. I couldn’t pay my student loans or medical bills. I had collections agencies calling me every other day. I had no assets I could sell, no house, no boat, no fancy car, and no relatives who would ever be contributing to my finances. With 180,000 miles, a cracked windshield, a broken side mirror, and two dents courtesy of icy roads and white supremacists, my Pontiac Vibe wasn’t worth the effort required to sell it. And thanks to my abysmally low credit score, I wasn’t qualified to get any new credit cards or loans.

  I responded the way I always had, doing what had to be done. I cut out all unnecessary expenses, stopped paying car insurance, signed up for food stamps and state health insurance, and relied on the resourcefulness I’d learned as a child. I tried to sell greeting cards I’d made as well as some of my artwork, but it seemed that everyone was making more money off my art than I was. People who’d bought some of my pieces years before took advantage of my name recognition being at an all-time high and sold my work for inflated prices online. Larry and Ruthanne were among the vultures, selling some of my high school art pieces and telling people they were giving me the funds. Do I need to mention that I never got a cent from them? Wild accusations further dampened my spirits and dissuaded me from creating any new work. Some people had the audacity to suggest that I’d printed photographs onto canvases and claimed they were paintings. I’d once made a triptych in which the middle panel was a commentary on the famous Romantic painting “The Slave Ship,” and, choosing to ignore the two side panels, people accused me of plagiarizing J. W. M. Turner. The absurd implication that I wasn’t a “real artist” but a fraud certainly didn’t help sales.

  The only thing that generated any sort of income for me was my experience braiding and styling Black hair. I was what’s known as a “kitchen stylist,” working out of my home to pay the bills. In Washington State, it’s legal to charge for braiding and non-chemical styling of Black hair, thanks to Salamata Sylla, the owner of Sally’s African Hair Braiding in Kent, Washington, who sued the state for the right to braid Black hair without a license. The fact that the cosmetology schools in Washington didn’t teach prospective beauticians how to braid and style Black hair helped her win the case and keep her shop open.

  I specialized in braiding, producing a look that was somewhat more African than African American. I could do individuals, cornrows, weaves, extensions, beaded extensions, crochet, jumbo twists, hot fusion, cold fusion, sew-in, tape-in, Senegalese twists, micro twists, Nubian twists, dreadlocks, faux locs, and microbraids. About half of my clients got a sew-in weave and the other half came to me for braided styles. I occasionally maintained men’s dreadlocks, but most of my clients were women or girls.

  In a good week, I’d have three or four appointments; in a bad one, none. While juggling my four jobs, I’d been forced
to pare down my list of clients, and with the media portraying me as a lunatic or a fraud it was hard to find new ones. Friends suggested I make YouTube videos or advertise, but having been accused of cultural appropriation I knew that the few clients I might be able to pick up from Spokane’s 2 percent Black population wouldn’t be worth the mockery I’d receive online. I didn’t lose many clients after the media firestorm, but I didn’t gain many new ones, either.

  Braiding and styling Black hair in the Inland Northwest had never been very lucrative, but it was extremely rewarding. There weren’t a lot of Black hair stylists in Spokane, so in some ways I felt like I was performing a vital public service, particularly when working with white parents who’d adopted Black children. These parents often didn’t know the first thing about taking care of Black hair. While hanging out at an indoor trampoline park with my kids one day, I saw a white couple with four Black kids, all of whom had short, tangled, and unkempt hair. I handed the mother my business card and explained that I did Black hair, and I was glad that I did. The woman told me that her three little girls had been getting teased at school for looking like boys and had become so shy they were hardly talking to anyone anymore. The family lived in Idaho, a good two hours from Spokane, but the long drive to their house was worth it. After I gave the three girls long flowing braids, they couldn’t stop hugging me. Their delight made the back pain and cramped fingers I had after fifteen hours of braiding—five hours per girl—disappear.

  On another occasion a white mother brought her twelve-year-old daughter directly from the hospital to my house so I could do her hair. The girl, whose father was Black and out of the picture, had attempted suicide because she felt like she didn’t fit in at school and was unhappy with her life. When she saw how she looked in the new style I gave her, she beamed. The smile on her face was priceless. She came to me to get her hair done several times after that, and it seemed to elevate her spirits each time.

  There were some heartbreaking experiences as well. A white woman who’d adopted a Black girl once asked me to braid her eight-year-old daughter’s hair. I did, but because money was tight the woman didn’t bring her daughter back to me until nearly a year had passed. It took me nine hours to detangle the combination of dreads and braids mixed with grass and lint that had resulted from so much neglect, and I only charged fifty dollars because that’s all the woman could afford. I often charged white mothers who’d adopted Black girls and didn’t have much money far less than the standard rate for my services, fearing that if I didn’t they might not bring their daughters back as often as is necessary to keep Black hair healthy. One of these mothers was the only client I lost because of the controversy surrounding me, telling me she felt “betrayed.” All my Black women clients continued to come just the same because they knew I did quality work and liked me as a person. To them, I was just Rachel, and in their presence I felt free to be myself. But even with their loyalty I still couldn’t make ends meet.

  My financial situation got so desperate I started to consider some of the offers I’d been given when I was one of the most popular trending topics online. In the weeks following my public shaming, the entertainment industry was full of ideas about how I could be turned into a commodity and offered me all sorts of “opportunities.” The easiest ones to dismiss were the six-figure offers from Vivid Entertainment—one for $150,000, the other for $175,000—to appear (and engage in four different sex acts) on its porn site wefuckblackgirls.com. I couldn’t say no fast enough. The British company Okon also wanted temporary use of my body, asking me to model its underwear, but I was seeking credibility-building options rather than gigs that required me to take my clothes off, so I passed.

  A variety of television shows contacted me as well. I was invited to be a contestant on The Amazing Race. VH1 flew me to New York City to discuss the possibility of having me appear in an episode of its reality show Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn with either Larry and Ruthanne or Ezra and Zach. Dr. Phil, Steve Harvey, and Oprah’s show Iyanla: Fix My Life also reached out, wanting to capitalize on the storyline that I was misguided and needed mental help. Knowing that none of these shows would help me rebuild my life, I turned them all down. The only offers I got that might possibly lead to me having a serious discussion about my situation came from the major networks. After my appearance on the Today show, CNN, FOX, and ABC expressed interest in talking with me, but respectable news organizations such as these don’t pay for interviews, so I kept searching.

  Running out of money and options, I agreed to be interviewed on November 15, 2015, for The Real, a daytime talk show whose hosts are all women of color, for $5,000. I also asked for Franklin to be flown with me and for him to be given a tour of Warner Bros. Studios. After aspiring to be a veterinarian and an author, Franklin now hoped to become an actor. Arranging this tour was one of my birthday presents to him. He’d just turned fourteen.

  I was promised that the discussion on the show would focus on my art and motherhood. To ensure that this would happen, I vetted a series of questions in the weeks leading up to the taping. But as soon as the cameras started rolling one of the hosts, Loni Love, asked, “So what is it about Black culture that you love so much? Is it the men?” and immediately I knew this was not going to be the interview I was promised. She went on to ask, “Are you ashamed of being white?” As the audience booed, Franklin tried to walk onto the stage to tell them to stop, but the production team held him back, saying they couldn’t let a minor go on camera.

  Since the show’s hosts wanted to talk about everything but my art and motherhood, I tried to weave in some tidbits of education regarding the convoluted worldview of race and the ways in which race isn’t a biological reality, but they were ignored and the conversation was steered back to drama and mockery. When the hosts asked me to admit that I was white and I acknowledged that, yes, I was born to white parents, the audience cheered wildly. When I went on to explain that I identified as Black, they booed. The all-too-familiar blight of American society had reared its ugly head once again: applause for whiteness and jeers for Blackness. What pained me was that this time around it was being orchestrated by women of color.

  This was the first time I’d appeared visibly pregnant on television, and Loni had the nerve to joke about it and ask if my baby was Black or white. After TMZ leaked the story about my pregnancy and people began speculating who the father might be, this became a sensitive topic for me. Being Black and living in an environment that was mostly white had already forced me to experience the anxiety-producing “gaze of the other,” and having my body scrutinized in this way only added to my unease, to the point that I’d come to dread going to the grocery store. When Loni asked about my pregnancy, I gave her a look that clearly illustrated how I was feeling. “You really don’t want to go there, bitch,” my eyes said. “You’d better back the fuck down.”

  I later found some consolation when a few people observed online that only a Black woman could shut down another Black woman like that. Others fixated on the idea that I’d “admitted to being white” when I acknowledged that was how I was born. Much to my relief, another segment of the population expressed their dislike for the way the hosts had handled the interview. As terrible as I felt afterward, this appearance seemed to generate much more sympathy for me than the Vanity Fair article had. Maybe people had begun to feel that, after four months of constant abuse, I’d been hit by enough punches and it was no longer funny to see me get beat up.

  Once the interview was over, I asked Franklin to bring out the portrait I’d painted of the hosts as a gift, handed it to them, then went straight to the green room, tore off my mic, and let the production team know how pissed I was. For Franklin’s sake, I managed to curb my anger enough to get through the Warner Bros. tour, but it took all my willpower to do so.

  I’d gone on the show with two goals: make enough money to keep my little family afloat and turn my reputation around. I comforted myself knowing that I’d at least achieved one of them. After
my attorney and agent’s fees had been deducted, I had enough money to pay our rent and bills and buy food in November and December. Beyond that, who knew?

  In every other regard, the trip to Los Angeles was a disaster. I was done trying to explain myself to people on television or in magazines. They didn’t get me and weren’t giving me a fair hearing, so why bother? I retreated to the cocoon I’d created for myself in Spokane, emerging only to run errands and turn in job applications and left wondering when or if people would ever be able to understand where I was coming from.

  Chapter Thirty

  Rebirth

  IN HIS 1970 BLACK POWER PROTEST SONG, Gil Scott-Heron asserted, “The revolution will not be televised.” He was right. If racial equality is ever to be achieved in the United States during the present era, it’s much more likely to be tweeted.

  The Black Twitter community has displayed its growing influence on several notable occasions in recent years. In the summer of 2013 alone, its followers succeeded in causing the loss of millions of dollars’ worth of business to companies that sold the products of Paula Deen, the celebrity chef who had admitted to telling racist jokes and repeatedly using the N-word, and preventing a book deal between a literary agent in Seattle and one of the jurors in George Zimmerman’s trial.

  In the wake of my story going viral, Black Twitter users grew equally enamored with posing questions that, in theory, only Black people could answer correctly and signing off with an #AskRachel hashtag. Most of the questions were about Black history or culture and were meant to test one’s Blackness. Many were also intended to make readers laugh. For example:

 

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